“Sorry. Not beau­ti­ful.”

Those are the words of psychologist and entitled asshat Jordan Peterson in reference to the image above.

“And no amount of au­thor­i­tar­ian tol­er­ance is go­ing to change that.”

Combining misogyny with cruelty and resentment, the tweet blew up, 65,000 likes, 5000 retweets, 11,000 quote tweets. Some of those responses were calling him out. (Indeed, after getting publicly called down, Peterson quit Twitter. Don’t worry; he’ll be back.) But some of those were fully in support, especially the 65,000 likes.

It feels like he’s telling us to hold true to archaic and outdated definitions of what beauty is. Or maybe he’s saying is “I’m famous, so let me impose my narrow-minded view of what is beautiful on the world.”

Or maybe it’s just “Hey, I’m a complete prick, and I’d like to let the world know that. Again.”

But 65,000 likes? Once again, I feel the need to apologize. For my gender. For my species. For the hateful and harmful things that come out of other people’s mouths and the people who enable that.

Because that picture? That picture is beautiful. The model? Is beautiful. The outfit? Is pretty great, too.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I spend a lot of time trying to argue against these attitudes. Beauty encompasses the physical, yes, but it also encompasses so much more.

And what I personally think is beautiful is probably different than what you, the person reading this right now, is beautiful.

200 years ago, black people couldn’t vote. 104 years ago, women weren’t allowed to vote. And it was in 1960 that first nations people finally got the right to vote without having to give up their status as first nations.

How we view people as people changes and evolves. Our definitions keep expanding, and that’s a good thing. We are becoming more inclusive, more tolerant, and more accepting. And that is a beautiful thing

But when that happens, the people who hold to the old standards, the ones who think that black people aren’t actually human, the ones who think that women should be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, the ones who think that if you’re gay you should remain in the closet, thank you very much, those people are going to necessarily react. They’re going to fight against it. Their view of the world is slipping away, and they can’t handle it.

With each step forward we take, we get further away from hateful ideologies like racism and sexism and transphobia. Are we perfect? By no means. We still have a long way to go. We are still dealing with the fallout of systemic racist institutions. Women still aren’t paid the same for doing the same work. But we’re getting better. Does that mean we should stop moving forward? Not at all. But the trend is generally in the right direction. And when people like Peterson reveal themselves to be neanderthal in their attitude and positively barbaric in their speech? We as a society are justified to tell them to shove it up their bunghole.

And if we have an Asian model on the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition? That can only be a good thing.

Because racism, sexism, judging people based on the colour of their skin or their gender and not the content of their hearts, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy? These are the things that are truly not beautiful.